03: 15-11

15. The Civil Wars - The Civil Wars

They made something that was beautifully simply in nature, and ultimate great.

In the end it was all too much and this will be their legacy.

RIP The Civil Wars

by The Editor

14. Washed Out - Paracosm

At First I was all

Then I was all

but then I was all

Then I was all

After it was all over I was all...

by The Editor

13. Har Mar Superstar - Bye Bye 17

“RON JEREMY HAS A SIDE CAREER AS A SINGER?”

That was the question I asked myself when looking at the cover art to Bye Bye 17, the 2013 release from Har Mar Superstar.

“RON JEREMY HAS THIS GOOD OF A VOICE?”

That was the question I asked myself when listening to this album for the first time.

Turns out, I was wrong. This isn’t Ron Jeremy at all, but none other than Minnesota’s Sean Tillmann, a singer who has been around for quite some time. This quickly became my album of the summer of 2013. Tillmann has a knack for combining happy-sounding Phil Spector-esque 1960s instrumentation with extremely depressing, sexual and violent lyrics. I mean, album highlight “www” is the happiest sounding suicide contemplation you will ever hear.

Just remember, kids, THIS IS NOT RON JEREMY.

by KwaKeeSirPeeNeeKu

12. Water Liars - Wyoming

I never listened to this album but it makes me think that I would listen to this while shredding gnarly lines at Jackson Hole.

by The Editor

11. Mikal Cronin - MCII

There’s an almost amusing dichotomy between the self-doubt Mikal Cronin is experiencing and the confidence in his expression of it. For someone struggling with his sense of self for so much of the first portions of the album, he has no reservations about how to get his point across. Cronin has refined, though some may say tempered, his sound into his most focused work of his [admittedly brief so far] solo career. It’s fitting in that regard for someone that has nailed his sound so quickly, that he seems to have figured himself out over the course of a 37 minute album. It didn’t take Cronin long to go from asking the self-reflective questions on Shout it Out to being ready to face the answers in Turn Away. MCIII has a lot to live up to, but we should be confident that a quick study like Cronin will figure something out.

by JUburton